The EHR bonus in 2013 under Medicare is $15,000 for first-time recipients who have demonstrated that they use EHRs in ways that improve the quality of care and lower its cost. A 2% reduction of that amount would come to $300.

The bonus is $12,000 for clinicians who received their first incentive payment in 2012 and $8000 for those who began receiving the payments in 2011, the first year of the program.

The maximum amount in Medicare bonuses that a clinician can receive is $44,000 over 5 years.

A CMS official disclosed the bonus reduction yesterday during the annual conference of the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) in New Orleans, Louisiana, according to Robert Doherty, senior vice president of governmental affairs and public policy at the American College of Physicians, in an interview with Medscape Medical News.

In government parlance, a sequester means an automatic, across-the-board budget cut. The current $85 billion sequester, which applies to defense as well as domestic spending, stems from the failure of Congress to enact legislation in 2011 to reduce the budget deficit by roughly $1.2 trillion. Lawmakers earlier had agreed that if they could not reach such a deal, then a

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